For this 21 year-old man, the freedom to marry is still just a little less important than life, livelihood, finding a place where he feels at home.
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I don’t normally get too worked up over same-sex marriage, but the majority opinion penned by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy after the legalization of marriage equality in the United States left me absolutely speechless. He writes:
“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family…As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage…They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”
When I first read the Supreme Court’s decision, I was overwhelmingly apathetic. I don’t consider same-sex marriage to be the most important LGBT issue of my generation. I say this knowing that each day trans people are killed, livelihoods are ruined when individuals are fired for their sexuality, and countless homeless LGBT youth sleep on the streets each night. For many marginalized and silenced voices such as the queer people of color and transgender individuals within the LGBT community, same-sex marriage is just a small victory on a long and tumultuous road to true equality.
From where I stand now as a 21 year-old, I know that being gay doesn’t define me, but I used to worry a lot more about “gay marriage” than I do now. As a young boy, I grew up thinking that I would grow old alone. I never considered a world where my marriage would ever be “real” because I had never entertained the idea of finding someone who would want to share a life with me.
At my Seventh Day Adventist church, only one person in the congregation was openly gay, and the community kept quiet and tried to brush it under the rug.
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I thought that I didn’t deserve to be happy and that I didn’t deserve to be loved. I would stay up at night wondering to myself, “If my skin was whiter, then would I love myself?” “If I was smarter, then would I love myself?” “If I wasn’t gay, then would I love myself? Much of my fear was rooted in shame and guilt. I was ashamed of being gay.
The Vietnamese community I grew up in, nicknamed Little Saigon after the two hundred thousand Vietnamese immigrants that settled there after the Vietnam War, was a breeding ground for conservative thought. In Vietnam, being gay was a social taboo that most people rarely discussed. At my Seventh Day Adventist church, only one person in the congregation was openly gay, and the community kept quiet and tried to brush it under the rug. Homosexuality was too shameful to discuss. At age eight, we moved to Arizona, which is home to some of the most radical conservative ideology in the nation e.g. the state tried to require people who “looked foreign” to provide proof of citizenship at any time. For years I lived with a part of myself that all my communities kept hush-hush about, making it painfully obvious that being gay was “bad.”
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I recently found consolation in knowing that my struggle to find acceptance between my communities was not unique. In Chimamanda Adichie’s TED talk, entitled “The Danger of a Single Story,” she outlines the struggle of not fitting in with other people’s expectations of oneself which she shares through various personal anecdotes. As a child she read the works of many great Western authors and wondered why none of the characters looked like her. She tells the audience that her college roommate was gravely disappointed to learn that her “tribal music” was nothing more than a Mariah Carey CD. Adichie goes on to explain that she had been raised on a single story, and even though it wasn’t her story, she started to believe it until finally she questioned even her own identity and authenticity.
Growing up isn’t about age, it’s about experiences.
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I too was raised on a single story that was not my own. Growing up in Little Saigon, California, I was always caught between two worlds. I would open the cupboard in hopes of finding Hot Cheetos or Hershey’s Kisses but instead I would find “pig ear cookies” and “sesame taffy.” I remembered growing up watching Chris Evans in Fantastic Four and being jealous that he was a superhero who could control fire and fly. As a sophomore in high school I discovered Grey’s Anatomy and binge-watched seven seasons because I was obsessed with Dr. Shepherd’s crazy surgical adventures. In these regards, I was a pretty normal boy—admiring superheroes and dreaming of becoming a doctor—but there was one insurmountable difference between me and the other boys. In every magazine ad, billboard, TV commercial, and red carpet premier the superheroes, surgeons, and models I saw in ads, men like Chris Evans, David Beckham, and Patrick Dempsey, all represented someone else’s narrative. The single story that I had been told time and time again taught me that boys don’t cry, cooking is for faggots, lighter skin is better, boys like sports, you need to be muscular, and music is for sissies. Being Vietnamese-American, I was raised with discordant cultural norms, leaving me trapped between two worlds, neither of which I could confidently belong to because the stories they told me were never my own.
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Fifth grade through freshman year of high school was the darkest period of my life. I found myself thinking things that I would never wish upon another person, incredibly dark and twisted thoughts, until I began contemplating suicide. I spent many nights crying myself to sleep with a razor blade in hand, praying to God not for forgiveness or change, but for the strength to end my life. I was so scared of what the world thought of me that I wasted time learning how to tie nooses out of belts and ties and considering lethal drug cocktails. I thought I was such a disappointment and that because I was gay, I was inherently flawed and undeserving of life or love. I think everyone goes through a phase in their life where they are caught between their teenage years and adulthood. I still go to bed at 7AM after a night of Mario Party or churros with friends. But maybe I became an adult the first time I tried to kill myself as a twelve-year-old or maybe it was when I woke up in a hospital all alone, 2,687 miles from home. What I do know is this:
Growing up isn’t about age, it’s about experiences.
A sense of melancholy creeps up my spine when I think back to my childhood and remember how I pushed my parents away. As soon as I was old enough to recognize that they didn’t approve of being “gay,” I retreated. I created a Me vs. Them mentality through education and language. I joined clubs and sports and classes to separate myself from them because if I was always at school, I wouldn’t have to be with them. I stopped speaking Vietnamese because I thought it would drive them away. Hearing Vietnamese made me want to walk away from the conversation because it reminded me of my heritage and the community that harassed and abused gay people. I did what I had to in order to protect myself from more self-hate, but I wish that my parents could have been there for me through my loneliest years.
My relationship with my parents has always been cold. My dad uses language tactically to cut people down, and even a decade later I’m still picking at the searing scars that his words left behind. On the other hand, my mom is reckless with her words, and her straightforward, unfiltered nature often is too blunt for people to handle. I’ve never been able to speak to my parents freely, but I wish I could have told them more when I was twelve that I just wasn’t ready to fight my battles because I didn’t have anything worth fighting for, not even myself. High school came, and after many years of crying myself to sleep at night, I was just too tired. I was tired of being angry at the world and being crippled by self-hate without anyone in my corner. I felt like I had nothing left to lose. Wherever that place was in my life, it was too dark and too exhausting to fight to survive. And although my parents may not have liked who I was, I was ready to let the light in and start learning how to love myself.
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I still remember the call. It was 3AM, near the end of July before sophomore year. I had been on the phone with my friend Victor playing twenty questions for five hours as I tried to get him to ask the right question. In hindsight, it seems trivial now as to why it was so hard for me to say the words, but we all have our own impossible battles. “I’m gay.” I had never said it aloud before, it was just something I always knew, and after five emotionally exhausting hours he finally asked me if I was gay and I said yes and he said, “It’s okay.”
I’ve known that I was gay since I was in kindergarten, but I have always been so much more than my sexuality.
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That was the first time I came out to anyone. Letting the light in was better than staying in the dark ever was. You lose a lot of love when you hate the world, and it takes a lot of energy to live two lives. After that call with Victor I realized one important lesson: we all have the opportunity to embrace a chosen family. Over the next three years of high school, I surrounded myself with people who loved me and brought out the best in me. I had grown so accustomed to life being just bearable that genuine happiness and freedom felt like hives breaking out across my skin. I started spending free time running in the Arizona canal, going on Chipotle lunch breaks while ABBA played in the background, and making chorizo and egg burritos with my best friends. At the time, I thought finding friends and mentors who supported me meant that I wouldn’t ever need to open up to my dad. I don’t think anyone ever chooses to have a broken relationship; it’s just the way it is. I’m still so bitter and angry at my dad for the things he’s done to me and I don’t know if I can forgive him yet.
All the lost love and growing pains I’ve experienced while studying abroad in Madrid has made me reconsider the place I call home. Kind of like Tom Hanks in The Terminal, I have no home right now. I only spend two weeks a year in Arizona with my parents. Between the backwards politics and my tense relationship with my dad, I never feel at ease in Arizona. I guess I could call Tufts my home, but I’ve lived in seven different rooms in my three years so far. Maybe a home isn’t about the space we live in but who we have there. I was mistaken to think I had started building a home with my first love. During the year and a half that we dated, I would visit him at his house on the weekends and spend time with his family who graciously welcomed me. His mom, brother, aunts, cousins, and grandparents embraced me with open arms and I had my own shelf in the bathroom, my own dresser, and my own keys to the house. Forgive me for thinking that I had started to build a home. And now I’m thousands of miles away from my friends and family in a foreign country living with a total stranger who I call Francisca, but home isn’t just the roof over your head. Home is your sacred someone or somewhere.
In spite of all the growing pains of adulthood that I’ve gone through in my first year as a non-teenager, this is what I can tell you. I miss home cooked meals. I miss bullshitting homework and still getting perfect grades. I miss being the best at something. I miss laughing until I cry.
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If you’ve known me since childhood, you would know that I have always been a singer, cook, adventurer, and story teller. As a child I sang a lot in church, I followed my mom in the kitchen, I loved planning vacations, and I couldn’t shut up for more than a minute before asking “Why?” And after 20 years, not much has changed. Ask me what I want to be when I graduate, and I would say a doctor. Ask me what I’m doing right now and I’d say writing a book in four-page increments. Ask me what I want to do and I’d say visit Barcelona, Marseilles, and Dublin. I’ve known that I was gay since I was in kindergarten, but I have always been so much more than my sexuality. I am halfway done with college at the young age of 20, and I’m still amazed as to where I am right now. For the first time in my life I am completely liberated. I don’t have to check in with anyone to prove that my work is done or that I’m home by a certain time. In its truest sense, studying abroad has been about total liberation. So thank you for all the wonderful, amazing people in my life who have helped me get to where I am now. Without you, I quite literally would not be chasing my dreams like I am now. Thank you for sticking with me through my growing pains.
Lastly, if I could give my 12 year-old self advice, I would say this: You are more than enough, you are worthwhile, and you can’t let the thoughts in your head win. One day when you grow up you’ll do great things. Strive to live a bold life, love deeper, and laugh louder, especially when times get rough. And remember to say I love you more, always choose to say it more often.
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Photo: Author’s own